


sweetheart, you look a little tired

by sky_blue_hightops



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Winged Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Winged TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Wingfic, it's soft just read it i suck at summaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28435620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_blue_hightops/pseuds/sky_blue_hightops
Summary: Though the hand that settles between his shoulder blades is warm, it sends a chill down his spine. "Relax," Phil murmurs behind him. "It's just me, mate. I promise." The touch is light. It’s not... it’s not-***Tommy struggles post-exile.
Relationships: Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 1781





	sweetheart, you look a little tired

Though the hand that settles between his shoulder blades is warm, it sends a chill down his spine. "Relax," Phil murmurs behind him. "It's just me, mate. I promise." The touch is light. It’s not... it’s not-

_There’s a knee pinning him down, sharp against the slope of his spine and crushing the air from his lungs. “Please,” he begs, fingers gripping the dirt under him. “Please, please-”_

_The words fall on deaf ears. Sunlight flashes on a pair of blades. Tommy tucks his face against the ground and refuses to watch._

It’s his dad’s hand. It’s Phil. He breathes in deeply, chest expanding freely even with someone touching him. “I’ll focus on your right one first, okay? Tell me if I need to stop.”

He barely registers the silence. The hand moves off the bare skin of his back - he startles, fighting the urge to twist in his seat, nerves itching at not being able to see. “Tommy? You with me?”

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Yeah, sorry. Go for it.” Phil hums gently, replacing his hand in the exact same spot and rubbing a small circle with his thumb before slowly, slowly shifting towards the cluster of feathers at the base of Tommy’s shoulder blade. The first touch makes Tommy jump, heart skipping a beat, before warm fingers settle into something gentle, familiar, and all the air leaves him in a rush.

_The horrible sound of the blades connecting. Tommy flinches, helpless, pushing up weakly with his hands against the rough grit but more of Dream’s weight shifts onto the knee holding him down, keeping Tommy where Dream wants him, unable to flee. Unable to fly._

_Black flutters in the edge of his vision. “It’s for your own good,” his captor tells him. The confidence in his voice doesn’t waver. Tommy chokes on a sob and screws his eyes shut, but the black won’t leave his head and it moves how it shouldn’t and when he shifts his back muscles, feathers that should drag in the dirt don’t respond-_

“Can-” Phil’s hands freeze instantly, even when the plea dies in Tommy’s throat. “Sorry, sorry-”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Wood scrapes stone as Phil shifts the stool he’s sitting on, moving himself firmly within Tommy’s line of sight. A knot unwinds at not just being able to see a little of what’s going on, but at his dad drawing closer. At the familiar scent of paper and apples, the breeze they both love to chase and the cinnamon warmth of Techno’s fireplace. “Here. Better?”

“Lots.” It’s a long second before the hands return to his feathers, misaligned and ruffled and in dire need of help he’d refused for so long (terrified, _terrified_ ). “Uh. Slowly?”

Phil’s smile is gentle. He’s never been more grateful for the way Phil just _understands_ , reading between the lines of Tommy’s shaking hands, puffed-out feathers, and disjointed phrases. “Of course.” And he _does_ work at a snail’s pace, taking his sweet time neatly laying each feather he finds and flicking away dust or down that shouldn’t be there.

Phil begins rambling about...his day, Tommy thinks, drifting in and out, barely paying attention to the words but focusing on the low tone of his voice. It reminds him of being younger again, perched eagerly on a chair in front of one of the few other people who knew how to help keep his wings from total chaos. Preening had always been one of his favorite things they did together, just him and Phil - aside from perhaps flying itself, but...

_“It’s for your own good,” Dream tells him, sickly-sweet, as if he isn’t wrist-deep in wrenching Tommy’s soul out of place. He refuses to watch. He refuses to watch. He refuses-_

_“You shouldn’t waste your time,” Wilbur tells him, except this Wilbur is long-gone and blinded by himself, turned away so he misses the way the light leaves Tommy’s eyes. The ravine walls around them are suffocating. Tommy misses the sky, the drip of a honey sunset all around him as far as he can see-_

_“Just means you’re a flight risk,” Tubbo tells him, voice caught up in laughter at his own joke. His best friend means well. The joke is innocent. Tommy’s heart aches and he bites down words he hasn’t figured out for himself. He’s not defensive. Tubbo doesn’t get it. It’s fine-_

Flying had been his favorite thing to do.

He draws his wings tighter to himself.

“Do you need a break?” Tommy snaps back to reality. The crackle of the fireplace swims back into focus. The cool stone under his feet is a far cry from sun-warmed dirt.

Phil’s worked his way to Tommy’s secondaries. He hasn’t done anything worse than a light tug on some feathers, clearly unsure of how much Tommy can handle. “Keep going?” His own voice sounds so small in his ears, but it’s enough.

“You got it,” Phil replies, smile evident in the sound of his voice. “This next part - it’s gonna be...more, okay? You haven’t-?”

“It’s been a while,” Tommy cuts him off. The patches Phil’s touched already burn from the contact, and he can almost make out the feeling of a handprint on his back, in line with his heart. A ‘while’ is an understatement. “I might-”

Phil hums again, the end of it dipping down into concern. “Okay. I’ve still got you, just relax and I’ll handle you. Promise.”

Tommy huffs a laugh. Phil keeps his promises, he knows that much. “Thanks, big man,” he gets out before Phil returns to his task and most of his coherent thoughts leave his head.

What had been merely simple feather adjustment before is gentle, firm movements instead, experienced hands pressing at tense muscles and more confidently fixing the ways his feathers lay. It feels like _more_ with his longer ones, all askew from his hasty trip through the forest and the snow and everything since then - he melts forwards, whining in the back of his throat. “Woah, okay-” Phil sounds almost amused at his reaction, one hand moving to grip his shoulder so Tommy doesn’t topple off his stool. “Careful, kid.”

“Nn.” He can’t keep himself upright. The hand still preening his right wing doesn’t falter, movements so rhythmic they’re hypnotic, and he thinks Phil calls out to someone above his head but to be fair a whole army could be attacking in that moment and Tommy likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. His whole body feels warm - he’d forgotten what pure safety felt like, blood slow in his veins like syrup and thoughts at an equal pace. The hand on his shoulder shifts so his collarbone is braced with Phil’s forearm crossed in front of it, Tommy drawn closer to his chest.

He won’t fall. He trusts Phil.

He’s drifting in and out of existence when another presence enters the room, footsteps settling firm on the ground. Words float by. “I need you to hold him, yeah, there you go-”

Two new hands grip his arms from the front. His head lolls forwards against a chest, and Phil’s hand returns to its original task. The new person’s breath ghosts over the top of his hair, slow and sure. “Tech?” He mumbles, fumbling to grasp at the front of Technoblade’s shirt. “Tired.”

“I can tell.” Tommy tenses for a moment, but Technoblade doesn’t move. He just keeps Tommy anchored in place, secure while Phil focuses entirely on...working magic, or something, what with how the whole world drips past like candle wax and the heat of the nearby fire threatens to consume his consciousness.

Sleep beckons, but he knows if he falls asleep it’d be 1) embarrassing and 2) taking away how amazing he feels in the moment, so Tommy struggles to blink his eyes open and flexes his hands in the fabric he’s still clutching like a lifeline. Phil works his way over, drawing out tiny contented noises and a rumbling chirp low in Tommy’s chest before he brushes against dark primaries-

_Sunlight on metal. Black against dirt. Tommy cries out in anger, frustrated tears tearing at the back of his throat. He can’t form words, just shrieks his grief into the ground and struggles impossibly against a fate he can’t avoid._

_It should hurt more, he decides. They should bleed more. Only then would it match the way he hurts inside. With each snip something new shrivels up in his chest. It’s for his own good. It’s for his own good. He doesn’t believe it for a second, but it’s for his own good and the hand pinning his right wing down is warm and he hasn’t been held in so very long-_

_Dream only stops talking once he’s done, each word a mockery of comfort and concern. He leaves Tommy curled up in the dust. He leaves him encircled by a halo of his own cut feathers._

_The sun sets. The sky is as dark as the wings he can’t use._

_When Dream approaches him again a few weeks later, not long before the day Tommy hurts to think about - there’s the same pair of shears loose in his fingers and a vague detachment in the line of his shoulders. “It’s for your own good.”_

_This time, Tommy kneels. He stares at the dirt under his knees. An unshaking hand lands on the back of his exposed neck and he doesn’t even shiver. Whether he’s strong enough to suppress the urge or too tired to react, it doesn’t matter._

_He doesn’t curl up and cry after this time. He doesn’t sift through the fragments of his primaries with unsteady fingers after this time._

_But he kneels for hours. He can’t make himself move._

Phil’s hand pauses before it actually reaches Tommy’s primaries. “He’s almost done.” Technoblade’s statement is completely dry of any emotion, and it somehow helps more than anything else could. It’s a fact. Tommy shudders in his hold and grapples with wanting to be anywhere but this room and wanting to be nowhere but this room, anger swirling awkwardly with exhaustion. “They’re growing back well. He’s almost done.”

Growing back?

“I’m sorry-” His breath stutters. “You can- I’m sorry, I didn’t realize-”

“No-” Phil sounds almost horrified when he interrupts Tommy, finally, words quick and realization quicker. “I won’t. Not like he did. We’re letting your feathers grow and heal, and it’s never happening again.”

Never again. Tommy shoves away the sound - because the sound of it still rings in his skull, clear as day. Two deadly-sharp blades slotting together isn’t something he can forget so easily. But Phil said never again, and he trusts Phil.

Fixing his primaries is quick work, probably hastened by the quiet, trembling panic clearly visible to the two others in the room, but he’ll take what he can get. Phil draws in a breath and returns to his ramble - something about farms and trading, something about the nearby town. Tommy’s eyes slide shut for the briefest of moments before he urges himself awake. “Almost done with your right one, mate,” Phil quietly informs him. “Then the left, then you can sleep.”

He should probably be more annoyed with how easily Phil can read him. And then he remembers his wings and the way they broadcast his emotions like lit-up signs (contentment in how they droop, exhaustion in twitching muscles, nervousness in the way his shorter feathers fluff up), and sighs.

The left is easier than the right. No memories wrestle with his half-consciousness, threatening his peaceful, drowsy doze. Phil’s more confident, and his preening has Tommy teetering on the edge of sleep within seconds. Tommy’s too far gone to even consider suppressing the continuous hum in the back of his throat, a light noise that just makes him sound young once more.

Phil’s laugh is muffled and genuine. “That’s better, isn’t it?” Tommy mumbles some kind of agreement, he thinks, slumped entirely forwards. “Techno, d’you mind-”

Tommy’s vaguely aware of being gathered up in someone’s arms, their hold gentle as to not disrupt his sleep and Phil’s careful work. “Just put him there,” Phil continues, and then he’s face down on soft fabric and a mattress that gives under him far better than solid ground ever could.

A warm hand smooths down the line of his back. He rumbles another chirp, even as the hand leaves to pull a blanket up to his shoulders and gather it around his shoulder blades.

His wings twitch once, before the muscles loosen and he melts into the nest of blankets and pillows around him. Two voices wish him a good night.

It’s silly, he thinks, before losing himself completely to sleep. This is the only good night he’s had in weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> we absolutely aren't talking about how it took me two and a half months to beat down writers block long enough to write something for this fandom. let me in. let me in please
> 
> also i might write more winged tommy. who knows. not me sorry
> 
> GO READ WRENS FIC ITS A BANGER

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Charred Feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257428) by [Spannah339](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spannah339/pseuds/Spannah339)




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